In the early 1800s Britain was building its first steam-hauled railways. And it wasn’t long before people wanted to ride on the trains. Mark Williams on the Rails s1e5: Carriage Kings
By 1830 Britain had its first inter-city railway. Mark Williams on the Rails s1e6: Death on the Tracks
Boiler explosions were the biggest killers of drivers and firemen. ibid.
By the middle of the nineteenth century there was a railway building bonanza. ibid.
Safety signalling was starting to improve but for the new railway companies which were often cash strapped because of their huge initial investment safety wasn’t always their number one priority. ibid.
Coal: here at Worsley in the north-west commerce, necessity, raw materials and invention came together to kick-start the industrial revolution. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations: Boom Time s1e1, Discovery 2002
Demand for coal was heavily outstripping supply ... The solution to the problem was found in the last place you’d expect: down the mine itself ... Water. And you’ve got to get rid of it because it runs downhill ... And this is the engine that powers the pump. It’s a very special engine. ibid.
Why not use the water? Why not treat it as a resource? In the same way you treat the coal you’ve so heavily won underground. Why not use it to create a canal so that you can transport your coal to your points of sale? ibid.
They laid rails but they treated the route as if it was a canal. Long flat sections interspersed with short steep inclines sometimes up to one in seven. The new railway reinforced Cromford’s importance as an industrial centre. Cheap cotton could now be sent to the weaving mills of Lancashire. These original Cromford & High Peak Company rails are cast-iron and one point two metres in length. They are all straight. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s1e2: Pants for Everyone
Creamware: a very pleasant tea-drinking vessel. The man who first made this genteel crockery was a hero of the industrial revolution: engineer, scientist, marketing genius – Josiah Wedgwood turned cups and saucers into an international business empire. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s1e3: Clocking On
The Wedgwood factory near Stoke ... A production line: consistent quality on a massive scale. ibid.
This new product used powdered flint for colour and texture. And was made of white clay and stone from Cornwall and bore clay from Devon and Dorset. And Cream-ware was the speciality of Josiah Wedgwood. Master potter, inventor, and one of the great entrepreneurs of the industrial revolution. ibid.
You can’t put this lot straight into a kiln; you have to make a protective container known as a sagger. And this job is known as sagger-maker’s-bottom-knocking ... Leading to this – the Bottle Kiln. ibid.
In fifty years revolutionaries like Wedgwood transformed the trade of potter into an industry. Wedgwood’s manufactory innovations were so well executed and so durable that Cream, or rather Queen’s-ware, is still made today. ibid.
Steam power had finally arrived in the textile industry. And this is what the boilers are generating steam for: it’s a tandem – because there are two cylinders one in front of the other like a bike – compound – because the steam is used more than once – condensing – because downstairs is James Watt’s separate condenser – creating a partial vacuum in this the big cylinder – steam engine! It develops five hundred horsepower. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s1e4: Pennine Passage
Because this is what it's driving – three hundred power-looms. You can get an idea of how loud it is, but you can’t feel the concrete floor vibrating ... Now everything is powered by steam. ibid.
A beautiful piece of working iron: a standardised Telford gate design to be found all over his roads. Looks almost Art Deco. Except it’s 1820 not 1920. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s1e5: Working Iron
What fired Telford’s ambition to create this incredible structure? The answer lies in the specification for this wrought-iron suspension bridge. The iron is to be best quality Shropshire iron. The world’s first iron bridge had been constructed only forty-seven years before the Menai over the River Seven in Shropshire, the heart of the iron industry. ibid.
In 1709 Abraham Darby got a patent for a new method of casting pot-bellied cooking pots ... in sand. In 1709 he moved from Bristol to here. And also in 1709 he did an amazing thing: because he discovered a way of smelting iron with coke ... He truly was the Father of the Industrial Revolution. ibid.
And it was local [Birmingham] traders who took the initiative. In 1769 they commissioned James Brindley to build a canal connecting the local coal mines to the canal. The price of coal halved, cutting costs in the metal workshops. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s1e6: Coining It
Matthew Boulton, the great entrepreneur ... It was his collaboration with James Watt, the father of the steam engine, that really put Birmingham on the map ... In thirty years they dispatched over five hundred steam engines via the canal network to mines and factories all around Britain. ibid.
Boulton was always quick to spot an opportunity. In the 1790s rapid inflation created a national demand for coinage, so he set up another production line using steam power to revolutionise coin making – a trade still carried on in the city [Birmingham] today. ibid.
Why was Sheffield king of the steel and cutlery business? ... Location, location, location. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s1e7: Cutting Edge
In the seventeenth and eighteen centuries Sheffield had over a hundred and sixty mills. ibid.
After three or four hours the lid would have been opened and the puller-out would wrap his lower body in water-soaked cloth, a water-soaked leather apron, position himself over the furnace – not a pleasant job – then the crucible would have been pulled out. ibid.
Sheffield not only had supplies of iron, coal and water, it now also had the steel industry which was ideally placed to exploit the steam engine. ibid.
1856 when Henry Bessemer invented a process for producing mass-produced steel. ibid.
From the 1770s the steam-engine market was dominated by the partnership of Boulton & Watt. They had made some improvements in efficiency but their engines, using massive copper boilers like giant kettles, had serious limitations. To get more power they had to build bigger and bigger machines. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s1e8: The Iron Horse
Richard Trevithick, a mining engineer with a passion for steam, was dreaming of small powerful engines – powerful enough to do a range of jobs and small enough to move themselves around. High pressure locomotion. This was the way of the future. The technology of the steam railways. ibid.
This is a replica of that secret locomotive. This is the first locomotive in the world: built by Trevithick over the winter of 1802, it’s a living dinosaur in the nicest possible sense. And we’re talking ten years before George Stephenson’s first attempts hit the tracks. ibid.
The truth is that the original steam locomotive was born out of a mix of Cornish genius and hard-nosed industrial competition. ibid.
This is the Caledonian canal. And it is the most beautiful canal in Britain. It was built for ships of 400 tons, designed to transform the Highlands economy. It employed hundreds of men for years and makes the English canals with their narrow boats seem half-hearted. But it was never successful. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s1e9: Highland Flop
At full capacity the engines of the Kew Bridge Station were capable of pumping thirty million gallons ... a day ... It’s a cathedral to steam. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s1e10: Power Crazy
Steam-engines: the horse’s nemesis. They’d existed for decades before anyone tried to put them to work on the farm. Most farming jobs required them to be taken out into the fields. These were the earliest agricultural steam-engines: portable engines. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s2e1: Bread and Beer
Steamrollers were the first self-propelled self-steered steam-engines. ibid.
Soon entrepreneurs started building factories to house the stocking frames ... These frame-knitter workshops with their high long windows to let in light were all built together around 1820. Mark Williams: More Industrial Revelations s2e2: What to Wear? Discovery 2005
The knitters took their employers to court with little effect. So, under the mythical leadership of one General Lud, well-organised gangs of knitters smashed the frames of any employers who broke the law. ibid.
A sewing machine did away with ten tailors. ibid.
This is a replica of Murdoch’s model. A top-secret design for a vehicle that could pull carriages along the road ... Murdoch continued developing his model vehicle throughout the 1780s ... He was fascinated by high-pressure steam. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s2e3: Gas on Wheels
This time extracting gas from coal ... He soon became so successful that he lit his own house. The first house lit by gas in the world. And Murdoch’s employers soon turned gas-light into big business. From 1805 mills and factories were to work shifts around the clock using their own gas generating plants. It wasn’t long before everyone wanted the new light. ibid.